http://www.w3.org/ — 20 March 2014 — Today
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) took
an important step to make web content and applications more accessible to
people with disabilities by publishing Accessible Rich Internet Applications
(WAI-ARIA) 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation. WAI-ARIA defines ways that
developers of browsers, media players, mobile devices and assistive
technologies, as well as content developers, can achieve greater
cross-platform accessibility. WAI-ARIA is introduced in the WAI-ARIA Overview.

"ARIA is general tool which can be used to add accessibility to many
different technologies," said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. "It is used by
HTML 5 now and is being built into additional W3C specifications. In the
dynamic and interactive world of the web today, it essential to describe to
accessibility software what the different parts of a web page do, so that
users with disabilities can use them effectively."

WAI-ARIA helps close the gap between the advanced capabilities of the Open
Web Platform and technologies available for implementing accessibility
requirements. Web developers increasingly create user interface controls
that allow users to get new Web content without requesting a full page
refresh. WAI-ARIA supports interoperability between browsers and assistive
technologies when using interactive features such as expandable menus and
drag-and-drop features on websites. This provides key support for conforming
with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, the international
standard for accessibility of websites and applications.

Cross-platform and cross-device accessibility solution

"As we celebrate the Web's 25th anniversary, enabling usable, accessible
rich Internet applications through a growing array of mobile devices, from
smartphones to automotive is vital," said Rod Smith, IBM VP of Emerging
Software Technologies. "When IBM introduced this technology to W3C our
goal was to ensure a more inclusive rich web. WAI-ARIA sets this precedent
by lowering barriers for people with disabilities universally across
devices."

WAI-ARIA brings the accessibility features of desktop applications to the
Web. In a desktop environment, people who use specialized assistive
technologies to help operate their computers must rely on accessibility
application programming interfaces (APIs) specific to each operating system.
WAI-ARIA makes that same type of information directly available to web
applications.

As part of today's announcement, W3C also published the WAI-ARIA 1.0 User
Agent Implementation Guide, which maps WAI-ARIA to accessibility-supporting
features on different platforms, indicating how web browsers, media players
and mobile applications can benefit from those features. Content authors who
use WAI-ARIA can now more easily re-purpose the same web content across
different platforms, without loss of accessibility support.

Implementation Progress

Implementation testing during the W3C standards development process showed
extensive implementation in several major browsers; details are available in
the implementation
report.

"We saw major progress in quality and comprehensiveness of ARIA
implementations in browsers, media players and mobile devices during the
Candidate Recommendation phase of ARIA development, and look forward to
broader implementations now that the standard has been finalized," said
Janina Sajka, Chair of the Protocols and Formats Working Group. "ARIA
provides web developers an overlay technology suitable for delivering stable
accessibility support on modern web apps, as well as for rapid remediation
of accessibility issues on older web content."

Why W3C

Twenty years ago, web inventor Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) as a forum to steward the development of open technology
standards ensuring the long-term growth of the Web. W3C is vendor neutral
in its approach and maintains a royalty-free patent policy. W3C activities
are conducted openly and are transparent to the public. In addition, all
W3C standards are available free of charge to encourage quick industry
adoption. Together, the community is rebuilding the Web into an Open Web
Platform for the delivery of services and rich applications across a broad
set of industries, including mobile, payments, television, publishing, and
transportation.

About the Web Accessibility Initiative

W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative
(WAI) works with organizations around the world to make the Web more
accessible for people with disabilities and older users. WAI pursues
accessibility of the Web by ensuring that Web technologies support
accessibility; developing guidelines for web content, browsers and media
players, and authoring tools; developing resources to support improved
evaluation tools; developing resources for education and outreach; and
coordinating with research and development efforts that can affect future
accessibility of the Web. WAI is supported in part by the U.S. Department
of Education's National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation
Research (NIDRR), the European Commission's Information Society
Technologies Programme, Adobe Systems, Deque Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and
IBM. For more information see http://www.w3.org/WAI/